crisp blood orange thins

crisp blood orange thins

• 24 Aug 2015

I looked in the biscuit tin yesterday and there were only 2 biscuits left in there. With a biscuit crisis on my hands it was time to bake. But what to make? I looked through my copy of Mix and Bake and decided to make some crisp lemon thins but as it's blood orange season, I thought I'd use blood oranges instead of lemons. I picked up a bag of blood oranges at the fruit market so expect to see all things blood orange on the blog for the next few weeks.



Blood oranges are a bit zingier than regular oranges so I thought they'd work well in this recipe.




I made the biscuit dough in the food processor and honestly weighing and measuring the ingredients took longer than it took to make the biscuit dough. I thought about icing the biscuits but instead made some blood orange salt to sprinkle over the dough before baking.





Here's the recipe for you. For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C. 

Crisp Blood Orange Thins - adapted from the Very Crisp Lemon Thins recipe from Mix and Bake by Belinda Jefferey

Makes 40-50

Ingredients
1½ cups (225 g) plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
160 g caster sugar
1 tbs finely grated blood orange rind
150 g unsalted butter, chopped
30 mls strained blood orange juice
1 tsp vanilla extract

Blood Orange Salt (optional)
1 tsp finely grated blood orange rind
1 tsp salt (I used salt flakes)

In the bowl of a large food processor combine all the dry ingredients with the grated orange rind. Add the chopped butter and whiz until the dough starts to come together. Mix the orange juice with the vanilla. Slowly add a little of the blood orange juice to the dough until a soft dough forms around the blade. You may not need to use all the juice.

Remove the dough from the food processor and gently form the dough into 2 logs. Wrap each log in baking paper and place in the fridge for 2 hours or until the dough has firmed. While the dough is chilling, prepare the orange salt if using. In a small bowl combine the rind with the salt and put to one side.

Preheat the oven to 170°C/325ºF. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Unwrap the dough then using a serrated knife, slice each log into 5 mm slices. Place the rounds onto the baking trays leaving some room to spread. If you like, you can sprinkle the top of each biscuit with some of the orange salt. Go easy with the salt though, you just need a tiny sprinkle otherwise the biscuits will be inedible.

Place the trays in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until the biscuits are crisp and the edges are golden brown. I usually rotate the trays half way through the cooking time. Cool on the tray for about 10 minutes before removing the biscuits from the tray onto a cooling rack. When cool, store the biscuits in an airtight container.





These thin crisp little biscuits are perfect served with a nice cup of tea.





I hope you all had great weekends. It was a lovely day on Saturday so I went out shopping and came home with 2 new pairs of shoes and some summer clothes. Roll on summer!

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen,

Jillian